"The Revolution is crushed;" but at what a cost, and amid what horrors! "Peace," says M. Thiers, "is about to be restored, but it will not succeed in relieving all honest and patriotic hearts of the profound sorrow with which they are afflicted." We know not, indeed, how or when such relief is to come; for ruin has been wrought and crimes have been perpetrated which will leave on Paris and on Frenchmen an ineffaceable brand. After the first appalling news of the great conflagrations, a faint hope had arisen that the ultimate result might prove less disastrous than had been apprehended, and it is true that a few of the noble buildings which were thought doomed have escaped. But the almost universal wreck would of itself almost obliterate for the moment the sense of relief, and the material ruin now constitutes the least horror in the scene. It is sufficiently distressing to picture every Quarter of the great Capital, which but the other day was the beauty of the world, scarred by conflagrations, torn by shells, pitted with musketry, and stained with blood. It is terrible to think that in a city "like Paris" fire and sword, and instruments of destruction still more hellish, have swept from West to East, and from South to North; that most of its noble palaces are but gaunt and blackened walls, and its finest streets laid in heaps of as utter ruin as the mounds of Nineveh. The mind is overwhelmed by the mere physical spectacle of this whirlwind of blazing destruction suddenly bursting over a noble city so near us, which we knew so well, and the inhabitants of which were but yesterday our neighbours and our friends. But even this is overpowered by the awful human ruin which it expresses and reflects. On both sides alike we hear of incredible acts of assassination and slaughter. The Insurgents have fulfilled, so far as they were able, their threats against the lives of their hostages as mercilessly as their other menaces. The Archbishop of Paris, the Curé of the Madeleine, President Bonjean, with priests, gendarmes, soldiers, and other victims to the number of 64, have been shot, and 168 others were only saved by the arrival of the troops. This massacre of distinguished and inoffensive men is one of those crimes which never die, and which blacken for ever the memory of their authors. But in the spirit of murder and hatred it displays the Communists seem not very much worse than their antagonists. It sounds like trifling for M. Thiers to be denouncing the Insurgents for having shot a captive officer "without respect for the laws of war." The laws of war! They are mild and Christian compared with the inhuman laws of revenge under which the Versailles troops have been shooting, bayoneting, ripping up prisoners, women and children, during the last six days. We have not a word to say for the black ruffians who, it is clear, deliberately planned the utter destruction of Paris, the burning of its inhabitants, and the obliteration of its treasures; but if soldiers will convert themselves into fiends in attacking fiends, is it any wonder if they redouble the fiendishness of the struggle? Fury has inflamed fury, and hate has embittered hate, until all the wild passions of the human heart have been fused into one vast and indistinguishable conflagration.
So far as we can recollect there has been nothing like it in history. The siege of Jerusalem may afford some parallel, but Roman soldiers never so utterly lost their self-control as the Versailles troops appear to have done. We are beggared for words to describe the scene, and exclaim that it is hell upon earth. It is nothing less. There are all the physical and all the moral accessories. Fire and brimstone, storm and tempest, torture, insult, hatred, despair, all forms of malice, murder, and destruction, have been raging in Paris during the last few days. Women forgetting their sex and their gentleness to commit assassination, to poison soldiers, to burn and to slay; little children converted into demons of destruction, and dropping petroleum into the areas of houses; soldiers in turn forgetting all distinctions of sex and age, and shooting down prisoners like vermin, now by scores and now by hundreds,—all combine to enact on civilized ground, and within the sight and hearing of their fellow-men, scenes which find a parallel only in the infernal regions imagined by prophets and poets. This is what human nature is capable of; for Frenchmen are men, and we shudder for our race. But, at all events, what hope is to be seen for France in this seething abyss? This tragedy is the end of eighty years of revolutions, of an eighty years' struggle after Liberty and Fraternity, eighty years of attempts again and again renewed to rebuild French Society on a new and harmonious basis. The end is a fiercer hatred, deeper divisions, wilder passions, and more eternal distrust. Will these six days of savage devastation tend to heal the existing breach between the lower and the middle classes of France? Will the mutual slaughter of soldiers and citizens tend towards that essential condition of a happy State; mutual confidence between the Army and the People? Will the blood of another butchered Archbishop sow the seeds of peace between the Priests and their Socialist foes? That which we seem at present to see in this outbreak of hell is the permanent creation of yawning abysses between classes, institutions, memories, and men. Paris may, perhaps, be rebuilt; but what is to wipe out the blood with which every street of Paris is now stained, and when will women cease to hand down to their children the envenomed hatreds of May, 1871? Where, above all, are the signs of that combined generosity, firmness and foresight in statesmen or soldiers which alone could lay the first stone of reconciliation? The prospect is too black for France and for Europe for us to dare look forward. We have no heart at present to balance the faults and crimes of the two sides, or to assign the relative blame. We only see the worst outburst ever yet displayed of human passions; we see it at the close of fifteen centuries of Christian civilization; we see it in one of the most gifted races of the world, and we know not where to look for hope or consolation.
may 30th.
Paris is perfectly tranquil. Shops are opening. The streets are crowded with people examining the amount of damage done. Prisoners in groups of a hundred are being marched under escort down the Boulevards. Fighting ceased about 3 yesterday afternoon. A few shots were fired from the windows at Belleville, where frightful scenes are said to have been enacted. The more desperate characters, felons and escaped forçats of the worst description, turned at the last moment on their own comrades because they refused to continue the fight. Some women murdered with knives two young men for the same reason. In consequence of the firing from the windows, an immense number of executions occurred. The park of the Buttes Chaumont was strewn with corpses. The soldiers were so furious that the officers found it necessary to warn strangers of the danger of incurring suspicion. A few of the inhabitants of Belleville were declaring openly to passers by that the affair was not yet over, and that terrible reprisals would be wreaked upon the soldiers. These boasts have not yet been fulfilled, but general apprehensions are, nevertheless, entertained that those of the insurgents who have escaped justice will try to inaugurate a secret system of arson and assassination. Constant discoveries of petroleum are still being made. The danger is increased by the fact that women, who, on account of their sex, are more likely lo escape notice, are really the most desperate. Great precautions are taken at night. The streets are full of sentries and all circulation is strictly forbidden. Any one who ventures out without the password runs the risk of being locked up all night. There are diversities of opinion relative to the Archbishop's fate even now. Some people affirm that he has escaped; but the evidence is in favour of his having been murdered at La Roquette.
Fears are entertained of an epidemic consequent upon the hurried burial of so many dead under the pavement of the streets.
may 31st and june 1st.
The search for Insurgents from house to house is still going on vigorously. It is still very hard either to leave or even to enter Paris, Gourde, the Communist Minister of Finance, has been found. It is said by Insurgents that Cluseret ought to be among the last batch of prisoners taken at Fort Vincennes. This being their last place of refuge it is expected that many other ringleaders will be discovered.
The Communist commander of that Fort sent to the Bavarian General a list of his officers and men, requesting for the former passes into Switzerland, for the latter passes into France. After various negotiations, the affair was left in the hands of General Vinoy, and it was agreed that all the garrison of Vincennes, having never fired a shot, should be detained prisoners only temporarily; but that all fugitives who had taken refuge there should be surrendered unconditionally. The garrison eagerly consented to the terms, and at once put their chiefs in prison. Orders were found on many of them, signed Ulysse Parent, for the burning of the Hôtel de Ville, the Bourse, and other places.
The Luxembourg is to replace temporarily the Hôtel de Ville, and the Staff has already moved there. Everything is going on quietly enough in most parts of Paris, but in the Belleville Quarter life is still unsafe. Not only shots are fired from windows, but occasionally Insurgents fire off revolvers upon officers at a few yards' distance. Many fear that, notwithstanding the large numbers of the Insurgents caught, and the terrible example made, enough have escaped to give further trouble, if not by open resistance, at least by arson and secret assassination. The severities, moreover, exercised by the military authorities have produced a pretty strong feeling of reaction against them, and in some of even the least revolutionary Quarters the troops are scarcely popular, certainly not so popular as when they entered Paris. The Insurgents find many sympathizers to hide them, and assist their escape from Paris.
The policy of England with reference to those who have escaped is watched with great anxiety.